Tag: Music books
The Music Lesson – Victor Wooten
by on Sep.03, 2009, under Music
Bassist, producer, and composer Victor Wooten is without question a master musician. He’s played with everyone from Larry Coryell and Bela Fleck to Gov’t Mule and Mike Stern; from India Arie to Branford Marsalis; from Daniel Amos to Natalie MacMaster. He’s released seven albums under his own name. His eighth, Palmystery, drops April 1 from Heads Up.
Wooten has also written a number of popular — some would argue necessary — instructional manuals for bassists. The Music Lesson
is self-published by his Vixboox imprint and it marks his first foray into the role of novelist. According to some (see below), his story is about enlightenment, told through the eyes of a bass player (big surprise there) who encounters a rather amorphous and ambiguous character that becomes his musical and spiritual teacher. It is cosmic, but it hardly qualifies as a “new age” tome. It’s far too funny and even random for that. And while it is about music, it’s also about the process of living. Narrated in the first person, Wooten’s novel feels like a story told intimately over dinner, and the protagonist’s voice comes across as both stunned, kinetically charged, and in a state of near constant surprise as he unfolds his tale. The novel has flaws: Its character development is sketchy, and it feels more like an autobiography than a fleshed-out novel, and the “plot” is almost nonexistent. But it’s no big deal. It’s a first book offered with an immediacy that puts his voice in the ear of the reader and it’s a good yarn.
Bassist Tony Levin claims in his back-cover blurb that: “Victor Wooten is the Carlos Castenada of music.” And Shannon Pable, a non-musician who is a master garden designer, claims in hers: “Don’t let the title fool you… it’s not just about music. Victor’s book blended beautifully with my vocation… In fact, it applies to everything we do in life.”
Um… yeah. Don’t let those stop you. The Music Lesson
Check Out The Music Lesson
The Mysticism of Sound and Music – Hazrat Inayat Khan
by on Sep.01, 2009, under Music
Music, according to Sufi teaching, is really a small expression of the overwhelming and perfect harmony of the whole universe—and that is the secret of its amazing power to move us. The Indian Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), the first teacher to bring the Islamic mystical tradition to the West, was an accomplished musician himself. His lucid exposition of music’s divine nature has become a modern classic, beloved only by those interested in Sufism but by musicians of all kinds.
The Mysticism of Sound and Music
is a powerful book of mystical insight for people of all traditions. Inayat Khan says that music is the ‘picture of our Beloved’ and then draws the picture stroke by stroke from every angle and plane until we see it. He is the only holy man I know who delivers an authentic and inclusive spiritual message from a musical sensibility. He does this rigorously, poetically and spontaneously, until we perceive our own actions as music. Open to any line on any page: you will be opened.
About the Author
Hazrat Inayat Khan was trained as a musician and a Sufi of the Chishti order and gave concert tours of Indian classical music in the United States and Europe.
Check Out The Mysticism of Sound and Music 
